Saint Luke
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative…”
Recently…
- Usually Quite Blessed
- Controlled by Desire
- Christian Radio Regret Manipulation
- Warming Indeed
- Judging by Today, It was a Good Decade
- Happy to Add Diabetes (Coffee)
- 12:13 on 12/13
- Instead of Inventing Subversive Subtexts
- Learning to Be a Grown Up Child
- We Promise Not to Look at the Board
- Right on Target
- Just Because it is Embarrassing
- Creative Way to Say Thanks
- These Things Happened
- Wasn’t the First Son of God
Saint Luke Welch
Subscribe
A Few Places of Note
Current Reading
Postmillenialism - An Eschatology of Hope
by Keith A Mathison
Paperback - 287 pages including indices.
The Legend of Bagger Vance
by Steven Pressfield
Mine is a paperback - 282 pages
Isaac said
I appreciate your final point, noting the Passover, manna, and peace offerings. I think that the peace offering in particular is a powerful typological antecedent to the Lord’s supper.
saintluke said
Jack Collins at Covenant Seminary makes the point that the Passover IS a peace offering, as the Sh’lamim were the only offering that the laity could eat.
Opponents of Paedocommunion try to show that the Passover was not eaten by women or children, especially children. But the passage of institution (Ex 12) requires all the congregation of Israel to eat it (Ex 12.47), and forbids only unconverted Gentiles to eat, while allowing converted Gentiles (ingrafted Jews) to eat it (Ex 12.48-49):
So as far as the text tells us, all Jews who could eat would have been natural participants.
But the priests’ families all ate the food of the altar, the Peace offerings are clearly fully communal, the manna is universal, and the water from the Rock is universal.
We have no evidence of any of these being restricted by age.
And the most obvious one that Paul points to for PROVING that we MUST EXAMINE ourselves is the EXAMPLE of the OT Manna / Rock Water.
He shows that the UNIVERSALITY of it was what demonstrates that JUDGMENT is universal (1 Cor 10.1-6):
But it is not the ONLY example; 1 Cor 10.7 continues about many other instances where the Israelites were idolatrous and were immoral. But this is in order to prove to US (v.6) that we too are under scrutiny. But it never excluded eaters from the table.
We have to note: The need for self examination is NOT NEW to the NT, it NEVER excluded children; in fact the MEAL is what tells us we all need examination. If we don’t need the meal, we don’t need examination. AND the sins which judge us are the kinds of sins that infants cannot commit without parental help. Idolatry is the main culprit. Feasting with demons.
The other main issue in 1 Cor 11.20-22, is that the rich were shaming the poor by showing off their wealth by bringing their own lunches to eat in front of the poor, and were gluttons and drunks and were dishonoring the body of Christ. This is exactly what he is referring to by saying that if we don’t “RECOGNIZE (discern) the BODY” we will be judged by the meal. If we USE THE MEAL OF BODY UNIT to SHAME THE BODY WITH DISUNITY then we are basically telling on ourselves by eating the meal.
“For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” (1 Cor 10.27)
Is it weird to say “body” means church at exactly this point?
1 Cor 10.17 has already said: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. ”
and 1 Cor 12, RIGHT after the passage in question, goes into the famous passage of unity of the body with diversity of gifts, even in the humbler members. This is a rebuke to those in 1 Cor 11.
The 1 Cor 12 passage culminates in this body referrence, which includes baptism AND the DRINKING of the Spirit:
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”
Far from showing the need to exclude children from the sacrament, the UNITY of the BODY in the sacrament is what calls us to holy living, but the example guards us against current anti-paedocommunion.
Isaac said
Your version of an “easy” answer makes me smile, but I’m going to need to gnaw on this a bit.
Just to sharpen your iron, I should note that only males in priestly families were allowed to eat the sacrifices (Lev 6:18, 29; 7:6, 34-35). I would assume, given this limitation, it may even have excluded non-ordained male descendants of priests. In that case, though, it wouldn’t be so much that children were excluded as that non-priests were excluded. It’s likely that “male descendants of Aaron” is another way of saying “priests.”
saintluke said
Not so fast Mister… More food for thought:
THE CAUSE OF EXODUS, THE FIRST MEAL OF COVENANT WORSHIP IN EGYPT – Ex 10.9:
Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the LORD.”
WAVE OFFERING – Lev 10.14:
But the breast that is waved and the thigh that is contributed you shall eat in a clean place, you and your sons and your daughters with you, for they are given as your due and your sons’ due from the sacrifices of the peace offerings of the people of Israel.
WAVE OFFERING – Nu 18.11
This also is yours: the contribution of their gift, all the wave offerings of the people of Israel. I have given them to you, and to your sons and daughters with you, as a perpetual due. Everyone who is clean in your house may eat it.
PEACE OFFERING – Dt 12.7, 12:
And there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice,
you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the LORD your God has blessed you.
And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levite that is within your towns, since he has no portion or inheritance with you.